Useful tips for pet photos: The Fix

The Fix: Useful tips for pet photos

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We love our pets like they're our little furry children.
But, unlike a real kid, pets don't really wanna sit down and stay put for a while when you take their picture.
So how do you get a great pet photo with a DSLR?
I'm gonna show you some universal tips.
First off, make sure your dial in all your camera settings before you take the shot.
You're gonna need to act quick to get some good photos.
And dogs and cats aren't gonna wanna sit still for you while you're fiddling around with your ISO, much less have time to focus on your shot.
And this is the frustration of pet photography right here.
This is why it takes a lot of patience and time.
How about you?
Sit down.
That's cold dirt.
There you go.
So here's some tips for settings you're gonna wanna make ahead of time.
For example, let's say I wanna take a nice, close up portrait of their face.
I want their eyes to be in really sharp focus and I'd like the background to be nice and soft.
To do that, I'm gonna put my camera into Aperture Priority mode.
Now, I'm gonna open the aperture all the way up.
In this case, it's a f-stop of a 1.8.
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I also recommend turning off your flash because not only is it going to possibly spook your pets, but it's also gonna give them red eye.
Another setting I recommend changing is your Autofocus setting.
You should keep Autofocus on for the sake of speed, but instead of it being an intelligent focus or a multipoint focus that might zero in on their snout, you wanna have a single point focus so you can really point out their eyes and get that tight focus on the eyes.
Key.
I'm looking at those eyes, really trying to use the autofocus to get in on the eyes.
[MUSIC].
Finally, I recommend putting your camera into a burst mode or a continuous shooting mode instead of a single shot.
A great pet photo is like a needle in a haystack of a hundred photos you're gonna take.
So just go for quantity.
Take a bunch of shots.
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Oh, that's a good one, the tongue just hanging out there, floppy tongue.
I think I got some great ones here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a tasty ear.
I shouldn't have put that peanut butter behind my ear this morning.
Alright, the rest of it is coming down to patience and experimentation.
[LAUGH] And try a few different environments.
If they're looking sad, you can take them out on a walk or try to engage them in something they like to do.
Hopefully, with any luck, by the end of the day, you'll have a few different shots worth framing.
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